Re: Dia-list digest, Vol 1 #758 - 5 msgs

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, James K. Lowden wrote:
> On 19 Feb 2003 12:29:14 -0800, dialist <pvspam-dialist hacklab net>
> wrote:
> > .gz.dia (as you similarly suggest) would still associate the file with
> > Dia, which is good, and a human could tell it was gzipped.
> >
> > But I don't know that a computer would be able to tell this is a gzipped
> > Dia file, and so if you, say, right-clicked it and chose "View as Text"
> > it wouldn't know to decompress it first, whereas if you chose say
> > ".gzdia" or something similar, it could be taught such.
>
> Hmm.  I guess it's another case of "where you stand depends on where you
> sit".  
>
> What we're really talking about, I think, is what two names to use for
> these three things:
>
> 1.  a zipped dia file
> 2.  an unzipped dia file
> 3.  a dia file
>
> Aesthetically, I think ".dia" is really really pretty.  It indicates very
> clearly what application created the file (or, anyway, is meant to be
> used with it).  It's pronounceable and mnemonic.  It's worth keeping.
> Heck, it's worth trademarking.

Yeah, .dia is good.  I don't know if you can trademark a suffix:)

> The question is, Is a .dia file -- so named -- zipped or not?  Because
> while file(1) can figure that out, many programs dumbly rely on whatever
> follows the last '.'.  
>
> For my money, a .dia is zipped, and associated with /usr/local/bin/dia.
> If I want to expressly state its zippedness or lack thereof, I can name
> it .gz.dia or .dia.gz or (unzipped) .dia.xml, etc.

If we do want to have the suffix indicate whether it's zipped or not, it's
a lot more obvious to put a 'z' or 'gz' in somewhere.  The Dia format is
XML, it just happens to have been zipped by default until recently.
.dia.xml is tautological.  I also prefer having my Dia files zipped, but I
frequently find it confusing that I can't tell from the filename if it's
zipped or not.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| HÃrdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?